When it came to launching Mountain Dew’s new flavour range, the brief was to truly act as a challenger, to behave differently and come up with an innovative way to connect with the brand’s cynical and hard to reach target market of 14 to 22 year olds.

In a heavily crowded carbonated soft drinks market, Mountain Dew has a fraction of the budget of its competitors and the core challenge was to get the target market to see Mountain Dew as a relevant brand and drink for them.

The Skate Pinball, a 600m2 giant pinball machine you could skate, built awareness and trial of the three new flavours but also built the brand’s profile helping to make it famous amongst New Zealand teens.

And the results from the giant pinball machine, which was designed with the help of three sports pros, were significant. It lifted individual core brand health measures by up to 19 points; increased brand consideration and trial measures by up to 10 points and drove a 16 percent increase in sales objectives and 32 percent on volume objectives without cannibalising the original Mountain Dew. That product was up 13 percent on sales and 15 percent in volume versus a year earlier.